Archive for December 13th, 2010
Virginia judge rules that federal government has no constitutional right to impose Obamacare mandate on Americans
This is going to the United States Supreme Court, which will have the final say, but today was a great day for people who have actually read the Constitution.
The federal government just does not have the ability to make you buy something…anything. Here’s a PDF of the decision for those legal minded to review.
The Commerce Clause has indeed been tortured through the years, but there is just not a Constitutional ability for the federal government to order Americans to purchase something.
If Obamacare was ruled legal, then where would the government stop?
Would you have to purchase so many cases of Coca Cola a year, if Coke was a big donor to one political party and lobbied for that mandate? Would every American be forced to purchase a GM automobile, since the government owns GM and this would increase sales? Would the government mandate Americans buy consumer goods manufactured in key political states, or by favored unions?
If Obamacare is legal, it opens the door to all sorts of abuses…readily imagined by anyone who pays even the slightest bit of attention to what Democrats do to people when they have the chance.
What do you think will happen when this makes it to the Supreme Court?
Rahm Emanuel Residency Challenge Update — looks like it is headed to Illinois Supreme Court one way or the other
Today, some administrative matters were dealt with in the residency challenge to Rahm Emanuel’s bid for Mayor of Chicago.
Tomorrow, at 9am here in Chicago, Emanuel will have to answer questions from something like 70 objectors to his Mayoral bid, most of whom are oddballs and grandstanders, but with a few top lawyers who know their stuff as well.
Repeatedly, I’m hearing the “Maury Wills Tax Court” case from the 1960s brought up…and I would love to hear from someone out there who knows more about the case and what it involved…and how it could be applied to the Chicago Mayor’s race.
Wills was a baseball player for the LA Dodgers, whose family lived in Spokane, Washington in a home that they owned. Wills claimed Spokane was his home and on his tax returns he deducted his travel costs to and from Spokane as if he was a long distance commuter.
But, the Tax Court ruled that Wills worked in LA, even though the Dodgers played half of their games in other states.
The argument is that Emanuel is like Wills…he worked in DC for more than a year so he had this position for longer than the IRS allows for a “temporary assignment”. DC thus became Emanuel’s tax home.
This is important because a person can have investment properties all over the country, owning homes, pieces of real estate, businesses, whatever. But that person can have only one tax home, which is the place that person actually “lives”.
Emanuel still owned a house in Chicago, but he turned that into an investment property when he moved out of the city for DC in 2008. He did not leave the house vacant and available to himself to come and go from it here in Chicago…but even if he did, the Maury Wills Tax Court case shows that the Court can decide where a person reports to work each day is where that person actually “lives”.
I’ve been told the deck is stacked in favor of Emanuel at the hearing tomorrow, which I am going to try to go to, to take all of this in, in person.
BUT, at preliminary hearings last week the objectors to Emanuel’s candidacy brought up the fact that Emanuel was objecting to his wife, Amy Rule, and children having to fly to Chicago from DC, where they live and where the kids go to school, to testify whether or not the family really lives in Chicago. Which is absurd.
If the Board of Elections and the Chicago Machine allow Emanuel to have his way on his residency, the objectors are not going to be satisfied and this decision will be appealed.
Because it’s a pressing matter, I’ve been told the Illinois Supreme Court will hear this case immediately and make a decision on it.
I don’t quite know what they will do, but Springfield, Illinois is controlled by Mike Madigan’s political machine, and the Madigans don’t want Rahm Emanuel to be Mayor. It’s unclear whether the Madigans control the Illinois Supreme Court, but Springfield seems to be less inclined to give Emanuel his way than Chicago is.
Please chime in if you are a lawyer or researcher who knows more specifics on the law involved here, because this Emanuel residency case sure seems like it has ramifications for all sorts of future races…not to mention the tension it would create if Emanuel is allowed to get away with this and regular Chicagoans have such difficulty with residency requirements when applying for, and keeping, city jobs. Yes, elected officials have greater leeway with things like this…but just imagine the problems a Mayor Emanuel would have with city workers, typically disgruntled already, who would never let it go that he was allowed to run for the office without actually living in the City…while much more stringent requirements are applied to the rank and file.
It would be chaos on a rolling basis.
QUESTION: Do you have a favorite Christmas cookie recipe you could share?
Do you have a favorite Christmas cookie recipe you could share with everyone?
Cookies are a great, inexpensive gift for the holidays that are actually much better than anything store bought. I had an aunt who used to bake all sorts of fancy cookies every year, and she’d give them out in fun handpainted tins every Christmas along with a beautiful, handwritten note.
I still have a lot of those tins…and every one of those notes.
Can’t remember any of the toys or store bought bits of nonsense I got which particular year, though.
Christmas is not a time where you have to spend a lot of money…but it’s a great chance for you to be creative, express yourself through all sorts of crafts (including baking), and show people you care about them by doing something special…like making tins of cookies or whatever’s special to you…however the Christmas spirit moves you.
What are your favorite cookie recipes?
Obama underwater in all known approval polls: more disapprove than approve of him. Those RAAACISTS!
Those RAAACISTS! are at it again!
Obama’s underwater in all known approval polls…except ones taken exclusively in the black community, where he’s still at 91% approval, and will stay there as long as his skin stays the current color.
For the rest of the country — the non-racist part — Obama has a lower approval than disapproval number.
In every poll there is.
It’s possible he can raise these numbers by 2012, but I don’t think it’s probable.
Democrats seem to think — and are hoping this happens — a large terrorist attack of some kind happens in 2011 that gives Obama a 9/11-grade infusion of public support before the presidential election.
But, would that really help him?
Because of his administration’s fey and coddling approach to Islam, and Obama’s personal insistence that Muslim terrorists are just “misunderstood CAIR bears”, if anything horrific did happen to America with Obama at the helm it seems like his approval ratings would go down, not up, since the public doesn’t seem to feel Obama knows or cares much what he’s doing in the Oval Office.
The Left sold this very flawed and deliberately mysterious man as a Lightbringing god-with-a-small-g and now even those lunatics have realized they made a terrible, terrible mistake in 2008.
Monday Open Thread: December 13th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Monday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
Know any other good Christmas mashups for the season?
